3. Breaking the Cycle

#VeesHoneyApproved

Using: Molly Sims’ beauty brand YSE Beauty has quickly become one of our all time favorites. To be hones, all of her products are fantastic, but we specifically have a soft spot for the Your Favorite Ex Exfoliant Pads. Not only is the name hilarious, but it’s one of the only products with Glycolic Acid that doesn’t irritate the skin. Absolutely love!

Supplementing: Nootropics have been a game changer for the Adderall detoxing process. They’re nutrient compounds that work across multiple brain pathways, helping pathways operate better – supporting brain energy, optimizing neurotransmitter status, cerebral circulation and neuroprotection, & more. My favorite brand is Thesis, as they offer personalized nootropics to fit your exact needs, and use the highest quality ingredients. Use code VEESHONEY for a discount.

Reading: Self-awareness has been a big theme for 2024. Learning to be aware of our emotions is the first step to finding inner peace, however it isn’t always easy. Radical Acceptance teaches us how to stop being at war with ourselves and begin to live fully every precious moment of our lives, because at the end of the day we want to enjoy every moment!

Listening: Our Saturn has returned, and everything started to change the minute Kacey Musgraves released her new album Deeper Well. Each song takes you on a journey of self discovery, growth, and introspection and is truly relatable to anyone embarking on a spiritual path.

Doing: Currently we are on an enema kick! Alternating between water and coffee to help clean out the gut and colon. Not only do things such as food and toxins get stuck in the gut, but emotions do as well. There is nothing like a good clean out, and we especially love the enema kit from Happy Bum Co! Use code veeshoney for a discount.

Now let’s get into it!

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I remember the first time I took Adderall. I was 17 years old in my junior year at an elite private school in LA. I say elite only to give you a clear picture of what I was up against: overbearing, competitive, narcissistic parents riding their kids through private school like a jockey in the Kentucky Derby. This created a culture of drugged out angsty teens trying to figure out a way to keep up with the demand. 

You see, my problem was never that I was hyperactive; it’s that I was narcoleptic and who wouldn’t be struggling in 3 AP classes, 5 extra curricular activities, 2 volunteer jobs, a boyfriend, mean girls, with an unhinged menopausal mother waiting at home. I was expected to look perfect, act perfect, and get all straight A’s no matter what the cost as to help my parents win the popularity contest. But school was always boring to me. If I wasn’t struggling to keep my eyes open, I was daydreaming that I was in some Disney Film waiting for prince charming to come save me from my wood and iron L-shaped desk since the 1st grade. 

So by the time I hit my junior year, I was burnt out, unmotivated and contemplating the meaning of life until a girl named Courtney came up to me, absolutely jazzed after what was possibly the most boring history class on the Civil War. She told me how her parents had just put her on a medication that is making her smarter in school, increasing her grades, and getting rid of her appetite as a bonus! Because at LA private schools, thin was clearly in. She handed me a bright orange capsule with little beans in it that read 30mg RX. She explained that it released slowly in the system, so I should take it right away. How bad could a pharmaceutical medication be? After all, her doctor prescribed it and her parents stood by it, which obviously meant that it was very safe. Down the hatch it went and within 20 minutes of sitting in Chemistry, I felt this euphoric rush overcome my body. My heart started to race, my mind became crystal clear, and I raced to the bathroom to have what was one of the best bowel movements of my life. Back in the classroom, I was engaged, interested, excited, and confident for what felt like the first time in my 17 years of being alive. Or so I thought…

After speeding through a few more periods with this new found chemical enlightenment and skipping lunch due to absolutely no appetite, I found myself in my car paranoid and panicking, calling my boyfriend at a neighboring school to come pick me up and take me home. I didn’t sleep that night. Not a wink. But I cleaned my entire room. 

The come down was ugly, but I was hooked. I eventually found my way to a psychiatrist's office complaining of lack of motivation and an inability to concentrate with a much lower dose of instant release Adderall that felt way more chic than the RX hard stuff; or so I told myself. What i didn’t realize was that with the adderall came a low grade chronic anxiety, a tinge of paranoia, some irritability and a creeping depression. So naturally I wound up back at that same psychiatrist for xanax, zoloft, and ambien. I was Elvis, taking uppers, downers and inbetweeners.

It’s interesting in life how we negotiate with ourselves on certain things: 

• “I’ll only eat organic, but I do botox.”

• “I don’t drink alcohol, but I love a party drug.”

• “I won’t touch sugar, but I love bread.”

That’s how I was with my pills. At 22, I decided that if I was going to eventually help people, the drugs had to go and so they did. Except for Adderall of course; that one was acceptable. 

This pill popping went on for another 13 years until I found myself at age 30 jobless, single, and living at my mother’s. You see this wonder drug may have sped me up to get me through the day, but it also disconnected me as a protection mechanism to further distance myself from my true essence which I believed was not good enough. A spiritually intelligent therapist and a safe accepting nurturing environment was what I really needed, but when life gives you lemons you turn it into fancy meth! A prescriptive way to harden yourself and dissociate from what’s really happening on the inside. 

Just like all of the meticulous and detailed study guides I would sell my senior year for $20 a pop, I’d be the one with a C on the test while every one of my buyers walked away with an A. It’s a distracted productivity and an insecure confidence that Adderall provides. You overthink, you never quite get to where you want to be, and blinking becomes a thing of the past. After 13 years of nitpicking boyfriends, becoming my “not-self” in friendships, isolating on and off, the time had come to quit. I also found myself having a glass of wine or more to take the edge off or smoking weed to knock myself out at night. 

I remember reading Nicholas Rasmussen from On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine say, “If you’re dependent on amphetamine, you will develop amphetamine psychosis eventually. It is a paranoid psychosis indistinguishable from schizophrenia.” And that was enough to scare those orange pills right into the trash. 

Was it easy? No. Was coming off of Adderall the best decision I’ve ever made? Yes. 

That being said, I had to work hard to fix my thyroid, my heart, my kidneys and my brain in the aftermath. Rebalancing my metabolism and my mind was a huge hurtle, but it is all possible. My course is coming soon, but I am writing this to share that we live in an overstimulated culture with unrealistic expectations and unreasonable comparisons. Youth is fleeting and so are our lives. Whether you are on a stimulant or not, I would encourage you to examine your addictions and take inventory on what is taking you away from the present moment. Because now is the only time we have and I would hate for you to wake up one day nearing the end, wondering what life would’ve been like if you had allowed yourself to be a little more authentic to and accepting of who you truly are: perfectly imperfect.